Campfire Tales
by Eryndil
Summary: As the company eats supper round the campfire, Bofur tells a shaggy dog story involving tree-climbing, frogs and bad archery. Just a bit of light-hearted nonsense.


_Title: Campfire Tales  
Genre: Humour & Friendship  
Rating: K  
Spoilers/Warnings: None that I can think of  
Context: Takes place during the early part of the quest, between the Shire and the trolls_

_Disclaimer: All existing copyrights remain the property of their respective owners and I make no claim to them. This story contains elements created by JRR Tolkien which are used here for non-profit-making purposes only. No infringement is intended._

_Summary: Bofur tells a shaggy dog story involving tree-climbing, frogs and bad archery. Just a bit of light-hearted nonsense._

* * *

"Excellent stew, Bombur."

At his brother's words, Kili looked up from his bowl and added his own compliment.

"Yes, it's delicious. I can't imagine how you made enough for the whole company with just two rabbits and a few herbs."

The cook gave him a mysterious smile and continued eating.

From his place next to Bombur, Bofur sent them a slight grimace. "Ah," he murmured, "you might not want to know what else he put in there."

Kili paused with his spoon halfway to his mouth. "What do you mean?"

"Well, he had to add a few more things to make it go round, as you might say."

The two young princes glanced at each other, then Fili stared at Bofur, eyes narrowed in suspicion. "What things?"

"Oh, I couldn't tell you," the older dwarf replied nonchalently. "Family secrets, you know." With that, he gave them an enigmatic wink and sat back, watching them closely.

Kili looked down at his stew, then up at his brother and finally back to Bofur. "Well, Bombur's eating it..."

"You know Bombur, he'd eat anything," Bofur replied. He raised his eyebrows and gazed at them for a long moment, enjoying himself immensely. Eventually, he decided the joke had run its course and broke into a broad grin.

"Don't worry lads, it's perfectly fine," he assured them. "Bombur wouldn't put anything bad into the stew."

Rolling their eyes at him, Fili and Kili returned their attention to their food.

"Not since that incident with the frogs, anyway," Bofur added.

"Frogs?" Ori piped up from beside Kili.

"Aye, frogs."

They all looked towards Bombur, who smiled and nodded in agreement. Somewhere behind him, Bifur was muttering under his breath in Khuzdul. Kili wasn't sure what he was saying, but it sounded like a curse on frogs.

"So, what happened?" The unexpected sound of Bilbo's voice made the three youngest dwarves look round to see that most of the others had gathered behind them and were listening to the conversation. Even Thorin seemed interested in what Bofur had to say.

As for Bofur, he was clearly relishing the opportunity to spin a yarn for the company. "Well..."

"This was many years ago, you understand, when Bombur and I were no older than you two." He nodded towards the young princes. "We were travelling over by the Weather Hills and we decided to do a spot of hunting to catch ourselves some supper. We had an axe and a bow between us."

Bofur gestured towards Kili. "Not a fine bow like yours, of course, just something we'd put together without much skill." He smiled reminiscently. "Turns out we didn't have much skill in using it either."

"Didn't you catch anything?" Ori asked.

"Not with that bow, that's for sure." Bofur chuckled. "First of all, I tried to shoot some rabbits but I kept missing. Then Bombur went after them with the axe but he just scared them away."

"You needed a snare," Nori said with the voice of experience.

Bofur nodded at him. "Aye, that we did, but we were young fools back then."

Kili resisted the temptation to make a comment about how little had changed. He stifled a smile, feeling proud of himself for showing so much restraint.

"Anyway," Bofur continued, "after a while, I got the idea to climb a tree -"

"Why did you do that?" Gloin sounded as perplexed as the rest of them felt. Dwarves weren't really tree-climbing types, unlike those ludicrous elves.

"Ah well..." Bofur looked slightly embarrassed. "I thought that I could aim better from up there. Gain the higher ground, so to speak."

"Actually, that makes sense." Kili nodded at their narrator, who seemed encouraged by this approval from the company's archer.

Lifting one flap of his hat to scratch his head, Bofur continued the story. "So I climbed this big tree as high as I could go. Just as I had stopped climbing, I heard a rustling sound right behind me."

"What was it?" gasped Ori excitedly, causing Dori to shush him none too discreetly.

Bofur ignored the by-play between the brothers and carried on with a small smile. "It was a squirrel." Settling his hat back into place, he looked around his audience.

"Well, I thought to myself that a squirrel would be better than nothing, so I took careful aim at it and..."

"And?" Dwalin asked tersely, clearly irritated by the dramatic pause.

"It ran off, the arrow missed and I fell off the branch," Bofur concluded in a rush.

The rest of the company broke into laughter at this less-than-heroic conclusion. Kili would have sworn that even Thorin looked amused.

"Did you injure yourself?" Ori wondered.

"Nope." Bofur shook his head. "Luckily, I managed to grab hold of another branch on the way down. _Unluckily_, that meant that I was stuck. I couldn't let go or I'd have fallen the rest of the way."

"So what did you do?" Bilbo looked rather nervous at the very thought of being stuck in a tree.

Bofur glanced across at his brother who was giving him what may have been a glare. It was hard to tell in the flickering light of the fire.

"Well..." He coughed slightly. "Bombur was waiting for me under the tree, so I told him to stand there and catch me."

"And did he?" Fili's voice was rippling with suppressed laughter as he anticipated the answer to his question.

Bofur gave him a rueful smile. "Not exactly. He stood there like I told him but he didn't quite catch me."

"What happened?" asked Dori.

Bombur spoke up for the first time since the story had begun. "He fell on top of me," he rumbled in such an indignant tone that the other dwarves began to laugh again.

"Well, at least you had a soft landing," Kili pointed out to Bofur, his eyes glinting with amusement.

"Not really," was the unexpected reply.

Ori looked between the two brothers with some confusion. "Why not?"

"Back in those days, Bombur was naught but skin and bones."

The entire company (with the exception of Bifur and Bofur) turned to stare at the rotund cook with astonishment.

"Skin and bones! Bombur?" Nori expressed the disbelief of the group.

"Aye, our ma used to say that he would waste away if he didn't eat more."

Bifur muttered something to his cousin and Bofur nodded in agreement. "You're right, he did take her advice. That's how he became such a fine figure of a dwarf."

The others gazed at Bombur with thinly disguised envy and little Ori swore to himself that one day he would have such a magnificent belly.

There was a moment of silence before Balin's voice startled them all. "So, where do the frogs come into this story?"

Fourteen pairs of eyes turned back to Bofur and he grinned at his audience. "Ah, I was wondering when you'd remember about that."

"Well, we still had to catch something for our supper so off we went - a bit bruised and battered, but undaunted. Bombur insisted that it was his turn with the bow, but he didn't hit anything... Except my hat."

His brother looked a bit sheepish at that particular anecdote and busied himself with finishing his stew.

"Eventually we found a river nearby," continued Bofur, "and we decided to catch some fish."

Bilbo nodded in approval. He was very partial to a nice piece of fish himself and still felt some regret when he remembered his tasty meal that had been devoured by Dwalin.

"I take it that didn't work either." Fili had a fair idea of where this story was going.

"Would you believe it - there were no fish in that river!"

At this point, several of the dwarves began arguing about whether or not they believed it but they were quickly silenced by a glare from Dwalin.

Oin leaned forward, hearing trumpet pressed firmly to his ear. "So, what did you do?"

"Well, I have to admit, even I was beginning to give up hope by then. I was sitting on the river bank, wondering what to do, when Bombur rushed up to me, all excited."

"I know!" Kili interrupted with a cheeky grin. "He'd found some frogs!"

Bofur raised an eyebrow at the young dwarf. "Who's telling this story - you or me?"

"Oops, sorry," Kili apologised, looking not at all sorry.

Shaking his head at the unwarranted interruption, Bofur continued the tale. "Aye, Bombur had found some frogs. Two of them to be precise, which he had knocked over the head with the ladle."

"Why didn't he use the axe?" Gloin wanted to know.

"You hit a frog with an axe and you just end up with a mess," Balin pointed out drily.

"Anyway..." Bofur said loudly to recapture the attention of his unruly audience. "Since we had nothing else to eat, we decided that we might as well try some frog stew."

Several members of the group pulled faces at the thought and Ori went slightly pale.

"So Bombur put the frogs into the pot while I fetched some water from the river -"

"Just like that?" Nori asked. "You didn't skin them or anything?"

Bofur gave him a steady look. "Have you ever tried to skin a frog?"

"Well, no..."

"Believe me, you don't want to." When Nori attempted to argue further, Bofur held up his hands. "Look, do you want to hear the rest of the story or don't you?"

There was a loud chorus of "yes" from the assembled company, along with a few mutters of "pipe down, Nori". Bofur straightened his hat again, opened his mouth and paused.

"Where was I?"

"Fetching water," Ori helpfully reminded him.

"Ah, that's right. We had set up camp right next to the river so it didn't take long. After I poured the water into the pot, Bombur and I set to work getting the fire started."

"You didn't do that first?"

Bofur looked up at Gloin. "No, like I said before, we were young and made a lot of mistakes."

The dwarves all shared doubtful looks, knowing how unlikely it was that any of their kind would make such an obvious blunder, no matter how young. They said nothing though, not wanting to spoil the story.

"So there we were, trying to get the fire going, when suddenly we heard this noise coming from the cooking pot."

Fili and Kili smirked at each other, wearing identical expressions of anticipatory glee. Ori, on the other hand, appeared to be mystified by this turn of events.

"What was it?"

Bifur leaned towards him with a big grin. "Well, my lad, it sounded a bit like..." He screwed up his face and did a passable impression of a frog call.

Ori's eyes opened wide and his mouth quickly followed suit. "It was the frogs!"

"That's right. Bombur had only stunned them when he hit them with the ladle. They woke up in our cooking pot and they were none to keen to become stew."

There were chuckles from his audience but it was obvious that the story was not yet over.

"So, what did you do?" Balin prompted the narrator with a twinkle in his eyes.

"Ah well, Bombur and I leapt up as fast as we could, but we weren't quick enough..."

With a expression of exaggerated shock, he dramatically announced, "before we knew it, those frogs had jumped out of the pot and – SPLASH! - straight into the river. All we could do was watch as our supper floated downstream."

He shook his head and concluded in a tone of great dismay. "And I swear those frogs were waving to us as they went."

The company burst into laughter once more and a good few of them thumped Bofur on the back, cheerfully commiserating with him over the loss of his meal. Kili looked around the jovial party and spotted his uncle at the back, chuckling to himself.

A few moments later, Thorin got to his feet and walked through the group to stand next to Bofur.

"Frog stew?" He asked with a knowing smile.

"That's right," Bofur replied, as convincingly as he could.

Leaning down, Thorin clasped his shoulder briefly. "Well, I can only hope that your brother's cooking is not quite as inventive as your tall tales."

Still chuckling, he strode off, leaving Bofur spluttering at his back.

"Tall tales?" he exclaimed, although not loud enough for their noble leader to hear him. "Tall tales... Hah, if that's what he thinks, he'd better not look too closely at tomorrow's stew."

(The End... Or is it?)


End file.
